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How the system works.
A regular model of a shareware business looks like this:
External sites (file archives, search engines, forums, advertisements, …) produce the constant flow of visitors coming to your site. They study your software, download distribution packages, go away, come back later and finally go to the registration service to make a purchase. After the purchase is made, the registration service sends the corresponding order message to the author with the information about the visitor, the program purchased, the amount of money transferred to the author, etc.
When visitors are on your site, you can collect statistics about them using usual means. But as soon as they go to the registration service to make a purchase, you "lose" them. Neither usual counters, nor analyzing web server logs can help you find out whether a particular visitor makes a purchase or not. And, therefore, none of these statistical means can single out buyers from the entire flow of site visitors and generate reports on them.
Integrating the SharewareStatistics system into your site will allow you to maintain this link between visitors and buyers. To achieve this goal, the SharewareStatistics system employs the capability of registration services to accept additional data in URLs. Later, the registration service will include these data into the order message sent to the author.
The SharewareStatistics system is installed on your site. It collects statistical information about all site visitors and gives each visitor a unique identifier that is also saved in this visitor’s cookies. You change the html (php, perl) code of your site so that clicking the 'Buy' link takes a visitor to the scripts of the SharewareStatistics system and the system redirects the visitor to your registration service using a specially generated URL. This URL contains the visitor’s identifier in the SharewareStatistics system. After the purchase is made, the registration service adds this visitor’s identifier to the order message and sends it to you and to the e-mail address of the SharewareStatistics system. The SharewareStatistics system receives the order message, retrieves the visitor's identifier from it and assigns the "Buyer" status to this visitor making it possible to generate a report later.
After that you can open reports generated by the SharewareStatistics system and see what external sites (visitor sources) give you the most of your software sales, how much is returned out of the money spent on advertising, etc.
Download the demo-version and you'll see what kind of the analytic data you'll have by using SharewareStatistics system.
You can read about the mechanism processing your advertising campaigns here.
The system is available in two versions: one-site and multisite. The differences between these two vesions are described here.
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